Reply All - #16 Why Is Mason Reese Crying?

Episode Date: March 15, 2015

For Jonathan Goldstein, YouTube offers endless nostalgia, but he always finds himself returning to the same subject - a precocious child actor from the early 70’s named Mason Reese. And then a few months ago, new clips of Reese began popping up on YouTube. What's more, they appeared to be uploaded by Reese himself. Jonathan sets out to discover why - and why now, after 40 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Together Again Hey there This is Alex And this is PJ And we are both back Finally, after many, many weeks apart, reunited

And it feels so good Welcome back Thanks, it's really great to be here You are on paternity leave Right, I keep calling it maternity leave You're not a mom That's right And I was on vacation

No, it's called vacation You are not a mom Right And now we're back And we're doing something pretty exciting this week. Yeah, it's a little different than the stuff we've done up till this point, but we're really, did you already say exciting? I did say exciting. Oh, okay. This week, Jonathan Goldstein's doing a story for us. He is the host of the CBC's Wiretap. He was a producer at This American

Life for a bunch of years. He's written a bunch of novels. He's fantastic. He has something very weird for us, which is pretty great. It's kind of hard to talk about this story without giving too much away, but it takes place in the 70s and in the present, it takes place online, and in a tiny two-room apartment. It's really, really fascinating. And so without giving anything amazing away, I'm just going to hand it over to Jonathan right now. Just a quick warning, this episode has some cuss words in it.

It's nothing terrible, but if you're, say, driving a car with your kids, maybe skip this one. All right, enjoy the show. If as a child I'd been told of a future world where there dwelled a magical TV that could play anything I wanted, an infinite television jukebox that I could watch all night without ever having the remote pride from my hands, I'd say, you must be describing Utopia.

And this is where I find myself. Wednesday night, 2.30 a.m., Utopia. Now this all-time heavyweight championship fight ready to go. There's the bell end. Here's Guy Lobo. There are things for my childhood that I've seen on YouTube that I thought I'd go to my deathbed without ever getting to revisit. visit. The two only undefeated heavyweight champions of the world.

Like the fake boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano, that special effects wizards put together in 1970 to determine who was the greatest fighter of all time. Off the ropes again. To the good body rally by Marciano. I often turn to it long after I should be in bed. Muhammad Ali see the draw gasps of breath as he moved back to the center of the room. There's the bell ending round one. Our bookshelves are where we project our tastes,

where we announce to our dinner guests that, of course we enjoy Faulkner, the golden age of comics and the essays of Montaigne. But if our bookshelves are where we telegraph, a version of who we want to be, then our YouTube search histories, called from late hours punching away at whiskey-soaked keyboards, are what we really are,

the self that is led by desire rather than decorum. After watching Ali and Marciano for a couple rounds, I think, wasn't there a song about Muhammad Ali I'd once heard? And then Superman makes me think, of course, of David Lee Roth, heroically bounding around in leather spats and fishnet bikini underwear. And so I seek out his haunting, isolated vocal tracks, that make jump sound like an a cappella spiritual intended to rouse the faithful to action. The clip recalls a time when Eddie Van Halen

and Valerie Bertinelli reigned as the Kim and Kanye of their day. Eddie played guitar and Valerie starred in one day at a time, a sitcom in which a mustachioed leather-vested janitor named Schneider allowed himself into her family's apartment whenever he pleased. Hey, sex symbol, how you doing with the quarterback? I hope you're not letting him score any touchdown. You know! Schneider, will you keep your nose out of this?

This is Julie's problem. Even though we can see almost anything we want on you, YouTube. There's something about the endless possibility that can cause anxiety. And so we just circle back to the clips that deliver the dopamine of childhood nostalgia. We all have that sweet spot. And for me, it's the early 70s, when my first memories of being alive were beginning to form. And the figure who most perfectly evokes this time, the 10-letter late-night search term I inevitably keep coming back to more than any other, is Mason Reed. People kept telling my mother, I looked like a munchkin.

Well, this is what a munchkin looks like. In the 70s, Mason Reese was an advertising phenomenon who appeared in dozens of commercials for everything from Dunkin' Donuts. Do I look like a munchkin? To raisin brand. This seal's got a lot, a lot of delicious raisins. And the Underwood Chicken Spread ad. With this adorable spoonerism that became a 1970s

catchphrase. Like I told her. Mom, you plus other words like having a boogish mord. Lately I've been trying to explain Mason Reese, and I keep coming up short on analogies. He was like the Wendy's

Where's the Beef Lady, I say, or Mikey from Life Serial. But it isn't quite true, while they were limited to one product and one memorable slogan, Mason advertised everything. And he went from being a TV commercial star to being

a star star. When he walked down the street, people asked for locks of his signature red hair and blessings for their babies. One mother even named her twins after him, calling one Mason and the other Reese. When I bring him up to my mother to see if she remembers, she says, wasn't he the little boy who was so homely, he was cute? There was something uncanny about Mason Reese. Because of his precocity, he didn't quite track as a child, and some people even thought he was a little person dressed in children's clothing, who, after a day's shoot, sparked up a stogie and poured himself a bourbon. The little old man's sad-eyed face, the prince valiant haircut, the scrunchy voice that sounds as though spoken under water in a tub of buttermilk,

the hair that only seemed to grow so bright red in the 70s. Mason Reese is as synonymous with childhood as the memory of sitting in a wet bathing suit on the hot vinyl backseat of my father's Pontiac while listening to an AM radio Blair, American Pie. His face is the smell of my grandmother's kitchen, of crayons, comic books. Except in the past year, New Mason Rees videos began to appear. Things from TV I don't recall ever having seen. It was as though my very desire was somehow having an incantatory effect, summoning deeper cuts from the past. Mason on afternoon talk show, the Mike Douglas show, tap dancing to singing in the rain. Introducing Leonard Nimoy and hamming it up like an old pro.

Please join me in walking one of my favorites. Leonard Nimoy. And then there's this. It's just not right. A man that old and an eight-year-old boy. An ABC sitcom pilot simply called Macy. where he plays a friendless child genius who brings home a 35-year-old man in safari shorts. He met while wandering the streets of New York.

But for all we know, he's a pervert. Oh, I don't think Mason leans that way. He can let him sleep over. But amidst this trove of new material, I found something else, something I didn't expect, something confusing, and sad. And he's doing something, I understand. that you especially like, a song that you especially are fond of. Yes. In this clip, Mason is co-hosting the Mike Douglas show,

and Harry Chapin is being introduced. You want to tell us what the song is, or do you know? I don't, I mean, is it that song? You know what it is. No, I don't want that song. Why, Mason? You're not putting it on that song. Because you're just not.

Oh. Now, he's very touched by that song. Mason, seated on his mini director's chair, just can't take it, and drops the facade of the precocious TV broadcaster, and collapses his face into his hands and weeps. Oh, you know what song it is? Well, maybe we ought to bring the guy with the worms back. Come on, pal.

Oh, come on over here. Come on over here, sit with Uncle Mike White. I said, you're going to be all right? This song is very touching, and as you can see, Mason's very touched by it. Is it okay? It's called Cats in the Cradle. Harry Chappen.

This is for my kids and for Mason. Thank you. My child arrived just the other day. And as Harry Chapin sings the quintessential song of complicated father-son love, Mason cries inconsolably. And he was talking for I knew it. And as he grew, he'd say, I'm going to be like you, dad.

You know I'm going to be like you. And the cats in the cradle and a silver spoon. Little boy blue and the man in the moon. When you're coming home, Daddy, don't know when. But we'll get together then, son. You know we'll have a good time then. YouTube is a cultural repository, but it's full of fragments, broken and left over,

like Roman ruins. Was there something that took place before the Harry Chapin introduction? Something that was happening just a lot. outside the frame, offstage and unseen. There wasn't much context to be gotten from YouTube commenters either, most of whom were just mean, saying things like, what the hell is that red-haired thing? Wow, he was more horrifying than I even remember.

I hated this ugly twerk when I was a kid. But there was this one thing, and when I first discovered it, I couldn't believe it was true. Looking more closely at the user account, the person uploading these new videos, I noticed the name was Mason Reese. I now had many questions. Why would Mason Reese upload a video of himself crying?

Myself crying as a child, should such footage exist, would be the kind of thing I'd probably never even show my closest friends, let alone the whole world. Why was Mason doing just that? And why did he post the videos now? Forty years later. These were questions I couldn't answer, by just tweaking my search terms

by adding more tabs to the browser window. What I wanted most wasn't to expand the frame, but to pass right through it entirely. In short, I wanted the real world. How long have you been acting in commercials? Well, sometimes seven now. I've been acting three years. That would mean you started when you were about four.

And a half. What we were hoping to do was to actually look at some clips with you. Yeah, I don't mind doing it. Yeah, that's very interesting. Coming up, Jonathan enters the real world and directs his questions to the one and only person who can actually answer them.

And now, back to the show. So I've started rolling. Cool. Hello, hello. Mason lives in a modest two-room apartment on New York's Upper West Side. When he greets me and my producer Chris at the door, I'm surprised by how little he is.

We're going to let that go. Why are you barking? The hair's almost the same. I don't know who that could be calling. The red hair, the eyes, the expressions. It's all there, only surrounded by more flesh. Looking at him is intense, like seeing an old friend. I mean, now and then, by the way, you might hear a fire-insure or something go by because we're running.

It's New York. That's New York, baby. It's exactly right. It's living in Manhattan. Mason seats us in his living. living room, which is a shrine to his child star. There's a photo of him co-hosting a telethon with Henry Winkler, a 1973 Clio Award for Best Actor in a Commercial, and a photograph of himself jogging in Central Park with Andy Warhol and Grace Jones. And looking around, like you've got all of this,

you've got all these photos of yourself as a kid and a lot of memorabilia. In some ways, do you feel this responsibility to that kid in a way? Or like, do you feel like you're... I'm going to interrupt you quickly. All of these pictures that you see of me with the Batmobile and Peter Lupus from Mission Impossible and Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner and all these, you know...

Cover of TV guide. Cover of TV guide. And the book I published when I was seven. That's what I have in my living room. Yeah. In my bedroom, there's not one picture. Uh-huh. Why is that?

because that's where I'm an adult. That's, you know what I'm saying? And to me that's very important. I'm a 50-year-old man. That's my private area. This is my public area. Yeah. And in private, this is not who I am.

But is this here for like, for us or is this here for you? Both. Both. Because it's a great reminder to me of what I've accomplished in my life. Mason Reese is 50, but he doesn't look at it. it. He doesn't look it in the way his Pomeranian doesn't look his age, or any age, because a Pomeranian is what it is, and Mason Reese is Mason Reese, and the world seizes on all those who are singular, unique, those who are what they are, and the world celebrates them the best it knows how,

by nailing them to a crucifix, by sticking them in front of a camera to hawk-fried dough and canned meat spread. Mason hasn't made a commercial since his teens, but his life seems pretty okay. In the intervening years, he's opened a few bars and even runs his own entertainment company, Borgesmored Productions. And why did he post the videos now, 40 years later? Mainly, he explains to me, because a friend of his put together a DVD of Mason Reese's greatest hits, and he thought he might as well share it with people who might be interested. Chris sets up a laptop on the coffee table. What we were hoping to do was to actually look at some of the clips with you.

Yeah, I don't mind doing it. Yeah, that's very interesting. We start off with perhaps the greatest hit of the mall, the Underwood Deviled Ham commercial. Cranberry sauce and lettuce on chicken's bread. Chunky peanut butter and apple sauce on this one. He had made a nifty stuffed tomato salad like I told her. Mom, you plus Underwood is like having a baby.

Borgesmord. So the whole Borgesh-Schmord thing at the end, I mean, that ended up being the money shot, as they call it. You know, that was it. That was the big one. It wasn't a mistake. It was planned, but it... It was? Yeah, and I'll tell you how. So Andy Doyle, who was the ad exec for the company,

came up to me and he said, Mason, we would like you to mispronounce the word smorgas. That's interesting. And I said, well, but Andy, you know, I know what the real word is, and I don't want America to think that I'm not smart enough to know the real word. So what he did was he went and he got a yellow pad of paper and he wrote down all these words that sounded like smorgasbord. And I picked out Borgesmort.

So Andy looks at me, goes, Mason, you are really incredible. You're not going to believe this. Borgeshmord is smorgasbord in Swedish but it's not right smorgasbord is Swedish yeah so he lied to me

so the bottom line is the ad exec lied to a six and a half year old kid and that commercial literally launched my career that's what made people like Dick Havitt and Mike Douglas and all the others you know call me on the phone and say hey this kid is something a little different

you know and we want a piece of him So, yeah. Let's take a look at another ad. Ah, Dunkin' Donuts. People kept telling my mother, I looked like a munchkin. Yeah, that was more commercial that I actually kind of regret doing. Why? Well, let's watch it.

And you'll, at the tagline, I'll pay a wine. The Big Bunch Basket or the Great Big Super Bunch Basket. Tell me, do I look like a munchkin? The only reason why I'm not particularly fond of that commercial was the fact that the tagline was, don't tell me I look like a munchkin. Well, what do you think happened? Every fucking place I went. Yeah.

You know, oh, that's the munchkin for a year. That was just abuse after abuse after abuse. Do you want to just take a look at the Harry Chapin? No. I'd better not. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll tell the story behind it.

Okay. You know, for some reason, and to this day, I don't know what the reason is, because my father and I were very close. That song, Cats in the Cradle, has a really hard effect on me. So people always say to me, oh, did you have a strange relationship in your father? Was he always away? And the answer was no. My dad was always around. So I never really understood why I identified with the song. other than the fact that I was a sensitive kid. And Harry was on the Mike Douglas show.

I was the co-host. And I asked him, are you going to be singing cats in the cradle? And he said, no, they asked me to do another one of my newer songs. Oh, okay. So I was not prepared for him to do that. And at the age of seven, I wasn't able to figure out,

well did he lie to me? And that's what I must have been thinking, you know, as a young kid. And I literally just broke down and fell apart. Because you had been lied to or because that song was going to be played? Yes, because the song was going to be played. But I'm sure part of my mind was, well, why would Harry say no? I literally just broke down into hysterics. And nobody understood why, except me, my parents and probably Harry.

You know, it was a 90-minute show back then. And there was probably a good 30 minutes left in the show. And I refused to come back. And I just went down into the commissary, which was in the basement of the building. And I sat there and I had a soda or something. And, you know, I just refused. I didn't want to go back anymore. A lot of Mason's stories involve as being lied to by adults, which is sad.

But what was it about Cats in the Cradle in particular? A song to make cry, if anyone, neglectful. dads, not little boys. If it had been any other song, I think Chris and I might have just let it drop. But as it was, we couldn't. I mean, come on, a child actor and a song about a dad,

bringing him to tears. And so he pressed him, unable to let go of all the beautiful poetic Freudian connotations. Cat's Cradle, I was trying to figure out why it might affect you so much. Do you think because you were working so much, do you think it was sort of the roles of reversed

and you were the one leaving? Oh, no. No, no, no. Because 99.9% of all the work I did was in New York. I feel like songs like that can register because it's really about distance. It's not about having a catch. Well, as I said, that's a beloved song.

I'm just going to belabor the Cats in the Cradle theory. He's dead already. Is it possible in a way it was as though like it was sort of like you singing the song to yourself? And then we drop it, but feel that went out just a little bit. You know, it's like you're both a child and and a dog. I don't have a childhood. All of these stereotypical things that kids do and did, I didn't do. I mean, I never went to a prom.

I never played sports. I never took extracurricular after-school activities. Did I sacrifice anything? I know you didn't ask that, but that's a logical question. Well, I don't know. Did I? I don't think so. I often tell people

that when you've written an elephant in the Barnum and Bailey circus been an NBC correspondent for the news piloted the Goodyear Blimp I wasn't in the Goodyear Blimp I flew the Goodyear Blimp

when you've gotten to do all the things that I did algebra is pretty fucking boring I have a very unique circumstances my mother and father every day of my life said I love you to me and every day of my life

would give me a kiss and a hug and just tell me that they love me and like my mom called me this morning and she wanted me to I was winter yesterday for three hours literally like vacuuming the floor and cutting her toenails

that's not what a son wants to do to a 90-year-old mother but I was doing it because I'm a nice boy I just thought Just in light of what you were saying, if we could just watch the one with your, where your mother comes on the show.

Yeah, I could watch that. Yeah. Yeah. Here you go. When did you first discover, Mrs. Reese, that this young man was a bit precocious? My mom was a good looking broad. She's a beautiful woman. Same.

He was born April 11th. I'd say April 12th. He is, to say the least, an unusual child. How do you and he get along? Fabulously. We yell, we fight, but we love each other a lot. I want to bring his father out. Okay, Mason? Do you want to bring your dad out?

Believe me. Will the real Bill Reese please stand? Will you sit here, play? Yeah, tell me about his reading habits. He reads at what level? Between 10th and 11th grade. Does he attend a public school? He attends a modusory,

school. Why do you think you're welling up? Well, again, you know, I mean, to some extent, because my mom and dad probably still loved each other at this point in our lives, you know, things were a lot simpler, maybe for me. My parents had not divorced yet. My two brothers and my sister and I were all very close. We still all kind of lived together for the most part. So, yeah, I think that a lot of it is, uh, harkens back to a simpler time. More carefree, perhaps. Even though I had a job to do, it was still more carefree because I was a kid.

And a lot of responsibilities had not been put on my head yet. You know, it's funny. My mom doesn't understand YouTube. You know, I mean, she kind of gets it, but doesn't really fully understand it. I showed her this clip and I jokingly said to her but maybe it was true. I said that's probably the last time you ever kissed dad.

Well, and I do love my dad. No. When you're a kid, you cry because you feel lied to because life is unfair and you don't understand anything. And then as an adult, you cry because life still isn't fair, but you do understand it. You cry because you do understand it. By 1977, Mason's dad would,

would begin spending more and more time at the company he started, and eventually he'd convert part of his office into a living space where he could spend nights. In his early teens, around the time the commercial offers started to dry up, Mason's parents would divorce, and Mason would move into the office with his dad. At 8.30 in the morning, when employees began to show up, Mason would sometimes still be lounging around in his t-shirt and underwear.

We're going to visit more with the recess following this. We'll be right. At one point, while watching the videos, Mason tells me that he realizes the commenters can be mean. Oh my God, what a freak. He was so ugly. What kind of talent did this kid have? He says, quoting them. I'd be a liar if I said it didn't affect me. When I ask him why he hasn't disabled the comments for his videos, he seems genuinely surprised that you could do such a thing. He pauses to consider it. But as of today, he still hasn't done it, and I don't think he ever will. It would mean not being able to receive any of the nice comments.

Like this one. Hey, Mason, thank you for these. They would not have been the 70s without you. Jonathan Goldstein is the host of the CBC show, Wiretap. Reply all is PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We were produced this week by Chris Neri, Tim Howard, Truthy Pinnam and Aeney, and edited by Alex Bloomberg. Matt Lieber is the smell of my grandmother's kitchen, of crayons, of comic books.

Our show is mixed by the Reverend John DeLore. Special thanks this week to Lizzie Vogt, Beth Card, and Grant Sprintz. Our theme music is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder, and our ad music is by build buildings. You can find us at iTunes.com slash replyall or replyall.com or replyall.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.